The Curse of Wanderlust
by Racke
Summary: After the wedding-fiasco, Ranma drops by the Mahora Festival for the sake of its food, and stumbles across a vampire who's been trapped for nearly seven years. Obviously, they get along like a house on fire.
1. Chapter 1

TCoW Chapter 1

XXX

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

"Huh, well that's an interesting kind of curse."

Ranma blinked, a little bit confused. "Wha-?" He glanced down, finding the tiny little blonde girl who'd spoken. "What are you talking about?"

"That curse of yours." The girl tilted her head, lips drifting into a lazy kind of smirk. "What did you do? Peep on a witch in the bath?"

"No!" Ranma glared at her. "I fell into Jusenkyo!"

The girl blinked. "Really?" She stared at him for a long moment, before making an annoyed noise. "Okay, I give up. 'Twisted wish'-curse, or 'mean lesson of humility'-curse?"

"Neither!" Ranma continued to glare at the weird girl. "We were just there to train martial-arts!"

"No curse is without reason, boy." The girl frowned at him, her eyes disturbingly sharp. "But if it's martial-arts... Let me guess, personal rule of 'no hitting girls'?"

Ranma didn't answer, but the girl simply made a disgusted kind of face anyway, as if she saw straight through him.

"Lesson of humility it is." The girl glanced him over once more, before frowning thoughtfully. "Then again... might've been a chance at both." She shrugged, dismissing the subject, and then turned to walk away.

"Oi!" Ranma set off after her. "What the hell was that about, you damn midget?!"

The girl froze, head coming around with exaggerated slowness, eyes like icicles. "What did you call me, brat?"

It was the start of a great friendship.

XXX

In hindsight, if Ranma had known that the weird little blonde girl was in fact an ancient evil vampire who'd been imprisoned in the school that he was visiting for the yearly Mahora Festival, he probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as willing to pick a fight with her.

He didn't regret picking the fight that he had, it'd been interesting to see how good she was with Aikido, and she wasn't nearly as scary as she probably should be. She'd killed people, lots of people even, she was apparently the kind of legendary figure that was used to scare small children into bed, but she wasn't-...

Honestly, between which person made him more uncomfortable to be in the same room as, Evangeline had absolutely nothing on any member of the Kuno-family. Or even Akane on a bad day.

Also, her reasoning behind that final 'both' options in regards to why he'd ended up cursed to turn into a girl in particular – rather than some kind of weird animal – was 'hormones'. Which was insulting, and Ranma was absolutely not going to have someone going around thinking that he was some kind of pervert who 'wanted into a girl's pants so badly that they were turned into a girl to make it easier'.

So he didn't regret going after her the way he had. It'd worked out okay anyway, so it wasn't like there was much point thinking about it.

Evangeline had been imprisoned in the school nearly seven years ago, and had been forced to survive through middle school – despite having lived for centuries at this point – ever since. The man who'd imprisoned her had originally promised to come and get her out of it, once she graduated like a 'normal young girl' – making it a merciful kind of childhood-recreation idea – but had then gone off and gotten himself killed somewhere a few years back.

So now she was stuck. Unless she wanted to try her luck with draining basically the entire population of Mahora for blood, which was apparently a ludicrous kind of thing to even consider attempting without the powers that had been sealed away with her imprisonment.

Ranma supposed that he should be a lot more worried about someone talking about massacring people in such a casual way, but it came across more as her whining about things that she wasn't going to do anyway. She wasn't... exactly a nice person, from what Ranma had seen himself, and from what she'd told him bluntly to his face. But she was... not really a bad person either, if Ranma was to explain it.

She'd killed people, because they kept attacking her. Ranma could kind of relate, he hadn't actually killed anyone, but if he hadn't been as highly trained as he was, he probably would've gotten pretty desperate at some point in between all of those crazy ambushes. Possibly desperate enough to resort to lethal force – especially when it was being used against him – and once he'd done it once, it probably would've become pretty easy to justify continuing to do it.

From Evangeline's rants surrounding the subject, it sounded like the man who'd ended up imprisoning her in the end had been the only person who'd been nice to her for... basically centuries. So she'd been very miffed about the imprisonment originally, hurt and confused but also believing that he truly would come back for her, which she was now endlessly bitter about.

It was weird how easily that kind of unpleasant back-story came out, considering how Evangeline didn't seem like the kind of person who'd really tell people much of anything at all about her personal feelings. But then, with the way they'd argued about the specifics of Jusenkyo landing him with a female-curse instead of an animal-curse like basically everyone else, a lot of personal stuff had probably spilled out from both sides of the argument.

Ranma liked girls not boys, he didn't have any particular interests in having kids, he hadn't messed around with his girl-form at all, he'd never really thought about girls until the whole fiancee-situation had reared its ugly head, and girls were supposed to be protected. Also, his father was a glutton, not a pervert, and hadn't in any way been creepy about traveling alone with a pretty daughter.

Ranma guessed that that last comment had been Eva trying to figure out if the curse had been trying to do more than just cause personal misery to himself, but she'd accepted his response without arguing. Normally, curses tended to stick better to people if they were being directly affected by them.

Sure, if all of your friendships crumbled away into nothingness because they didn't want to be around your cursed form, then that'd make you pretty miserable, but it didn't really feed the curse itself as efficiently or something. Which was a bit of a weird concept, because Ranma hadn't really heard anything about curses feeding on people up until that point.

It made sense though. Ryoga who was always trying to be strong, had become such a small and fragile thing, clearly on the menu for basically anything around him. Genma who loved to eat new things, had become a herbivore. Even Shampoo made a certain amount of sense, considering how she wanted to be close to Ranma, and the fact that he wouldn't let a part-cat anywhere near him if he could help it.

Though again, Shampoo's might be explained with something else in truth, seeing as it was such an indirect kind of curse. It could be that it was the only curse Jusenkyo could think of to make her as miserable as possible, but they could've managed that just fine by turning her into a part-boy or something. Maybe it was something about her making a wish of 'being cute' and Jusenkyo giving her a form that _she_ thought was cute, but that'd make her feel stupid because of how it drove away Ranma even further.

In the end, it was the kind of discussion that he'd probably have to include Shampoo in if he wanted any real answers, but there was no way that he was going to do anything like that.

So Ranma had shared a lot about a lot of things that he probably wasn't actually comfortable with sharing with much of anyone, and the same could be said about Evangeline.

In fact, Evangeline had spent a long time blushing horribly and grumbling to herself about her stupid childish biology whenever she calmed down from one of their arguments. Which was-... Ranma wasn't super-thrilled to have the ancient vampire compare his own emotional development to that of a preteen, but he couldn't deny that it'd gotten... pretty childish, there at one point. And if Eva could blame her youthful biology for that silliness, then so could Ranma.

There'd been lots of interesting things that Ranma had learned about curses though. Mainly useless stuff, like how they tended to only last for a couple of centuries at the most – which meant that anyone affected by such a curse would probably be long-since dead by the time it faded – but interesting stuff to know nonetheless.

For example, if Ranma could figure out a way to wholeheartedly enjoy what his curse did to him, it'd start sputtering away and run out of juice... probably within two or three decades. Of course, it would mean spending those years perfectly happy with the curse, which was a level of zen that Ranma would probably need brainwashing to manage, and would probably mean that he was a very different kind of person by the end of those decades, but still.

It was a bit of a shame to learn that Evangeline had studied curses about as much as she'd studied healing-magic. Apparently, there wasn't much use for either of those things when you were immortal and could destroy a whole army in a few minutes.

After having been trapped, Eva had put in some effort to figure out curses, which had been a lot of the reason for her approaching Ranma when she'd spotted him at the festival – Mahora's school festival had the best food for miles, and everyone knew it, so of course Ranma had attended it. Unfortunately, she wasn't really suited for doing much more than poking them with a stick and making thoughtful noises.

Her plans to her own curse mainly amounted to sticking around Mahora for another century or so, and then sneaking a bunch of 'voluntarily' given blood from the student body, before using that magical boost to blast her way through the weakened curse.

A decent enough way to get out of a prison, but not exactly applicable for how to fix someone's biology. Unless you wanted to fix it by exploding them all over the ceiling, which Chachazero had gleefully suggested that they try, 'just to be sure'.

Ranma didn't mind Eva, for all that she was an evil vampire who'd killed people, she was pretty reasonable – if bitter – about life. Better than some of the people around Nerima at least. But Chachazero? Ranma would absolutely kick that creepy little doll into a furnace one of these days.

Just as soon as he figured out a way to not have Evangeline string him up in that training-resort of hers to do unspeakable experiments with his body in retaliation.

He was pretty sure she didn't actually need to do horrific things to people's bodies in the name of 'magical science' or whatever, but Ranma knew her well enough by now to know that Evangeline would absolutely use horrific experiments as an excuse to make Ranma's life a living nightmare, if he destroyed something that belonged to her.

Eva didn't exactly have a lot of things that belonged to her, so even if she wasn't always the most fond of them, she was protective of what she had.

Ranma could sort of relate.

XXX

"Garlic?" Ranma wheezed out, snickering helplessly.

"Shut up!" Eva threw another wave of ice his way.

"He beat you with a pit filled with garlic?" Ranma dodged out of the path of the ice, side-stepped a follow-up blow that would've probably splattered his head all over the wall, and continued laughing.

"Stand still and die, you brat!" Eva yelled at him, her expression wholly into the territory of embarrassed anger. So at least she knew how ridiculous it'd been.

Still, it was a bit disappointing to remember that the Thousand Master was dead. He sounded like he would've been a fun kind of guy to fight.

Not that Eva was boring by any means, Ranma admitted to himself as something spectacularly flashy and lethal breezed past where his head had been moments before, but there was always a certain charm in fighting people who were as deviously sneaky as his old man.

Especially when they weren't actually practitioners of Anything Goes. By now, Ranma had a pretty good idea about how Genma and Happosai and the old ghoul – and pretty much everyone else in Nerima too – fought.

Sure, that didn't mean that he'd know exactly how to beat them, Happosai and the old ghoul both being very much fights that ought to be avoided, for the sake of humiliation or collateral-damage or both. And there might always be a new technique here or there that they'd added onto their skill-set since the last time Ranma beaten the rest of them into the dust, but it was always more interesting to fight someone whose entire style was new.

XXX

"No, it's not another fiancee." Ranma said dully, more than used to this particular song and dance by now.

Nabiki looked about as convinced as she usually did, but didn't try to argue.

If Ranma hadn't known that she was probably going to try to stalk him, he would've been really suspicious just from how easily she gave in. Nabiki had been trying to stalk him through Mahora for ages.

Ranma knew that visiting Eva probably counted as running away from his troubles, but it was still such a weird novelty to be able to actually talk to someone who understood him. Oh, she'd absolutely mock him over it, but it wouldn't be because she really judged him over it. Eva was about as subtle about manipulation as a brick to the head, and had very little interest in sussing out Ranma's secrets so that they could be used against him in the fiancee-debacle.

As far as friends go, the only one better was probably Ryoga, and that was only because fighting Eva was more about running away quickly enough that she didn't murder you on the spot, so Ryoga was a lot more entertaining to fight. Also, they'd known each other for ages, even if that mostly included picking fights with each other, so there was that too.

Ranma was pretty sure that what Eva gave him was perspective.

Nerima wasn't all there was to the world, Ranma's fiancee-troubles were kind of hilarious from a distance, even if you needed a certain level of sadism to properly appreciate it, and even the weirdest martial arts still made more sense than Eva trying to explain magical theory in front of a blackboard.

Also, Eva was kind of shitty at throwing chalk, and it was kind of fun to give her reason to practice, whenever he interrupted her with stupid questions.

So, every now and then, Ranma would take a day off from his fiancees and his rivals and Happosai making a nuisance of himself, and he would go off to visit Eva at Mahora. It wasn't like he was gone for more than a couple of hours at a time.

And the moment Ranma figured out how, he was absolutely making one of those time-distortion training-fields himself. It was probably never going to happen, but it was something worth daydreaming about. The progress he could make if he could just spend a couple of days every day to play around with chi uninterrupted? Oh, but it'd be amazing.

Ranma was pretty sure that he'd lose Nabiki's tail – either herself or whoever she hired – not long after arriving at Mahora Academy. Eva had described the place as being basically a magical fortress of weird wards interwoven and layered every which way, until someone who wasn't invited by a person living there would probably not make it to their destination.

It'd be a bit like putting Ranma into a room filled with water-hazards, and expecting him to make it to the other end without his curse activating. Well, a bit more likely than that, as long as Nabiki didn't have bloodthirsty murder on her mind. Actually, even if she did, as long as she had some pretty high-end magical potential hidden away, then she'd probably manage to bulldoze through most of the defenses anyway.

A magical fortress it might be, but it was a school foremost, and magic was supposed to be hidden from the masses, so they couldn't really include any wards with effects blatant enough to be noticed. Ranma didn't really see why magic had to be kept secret, but then he couldn't deny that he certainly hadn't ever heard of it before getting cursed at Jusenkyo, so it was definitely something they were pretty successful in trying for.

More interestingly, Genma and Soun had both kind of gone a bit green around the edges when they'd heard of the Mahora Festival in the first place, and had refused to attend. Something about Happosai getting them banned for life, only with less words and more sword-swinging.

At the time, Ranma had kind of just shrugged and gone anyway, since nobody would know that he practiced Anything Goes unless he got into a fight – which he'd very deliberately avoided, because he wasn't an idiot – and there'd be lots of good food.

So, the idiot-fathers were cheerfully pretending at obliviousness whenever Ranma decided to take off in the direction of Mahora for a couple of hours, even if Genma had tried to beat it into his head that it was a 'bad place' and that he should avoid it at all costs, there at the beginning. Genma did that about lots of stuff, so it wasn't really worth paying attention to most of the time.

The Kuno-family were also feigning obliviousness about Mahora, to the point where that ninja of theirs had refused all of Nabiki's attempts to cajole him into helping her track Ranma down. Something about an 'ancient truce', which in all likelihood meant that someone had tossed the Kuno-family out of the school on their nose at some point years ago. Which honestly probably said excellent things about their school's curriculum.

Not that Ranma planned on saying that anywhere within hearing-distance of that bomb-crazy Hawaiian-reject of a headmaster.

XXX

"I mean, I get why." Ranma admitted, frowning to himself. "Being followed around like that isn't as great as people seem to think."

Eva made an aggravated noise, sluggishly shifting to sit up in the sand, clearly not appreciating Ranma's opinion.

Honestly though, the Thousand Master had still put her in a pretty miserable situation, and Ranma could hardly blame her for being prickly about it. "It's like... I get where he's coming from and all, but it's just-... I mean, if he was so desperate to get rid of you, he should've just faked his death or something, like a normal person."

"Normal people fake their deaths to get away from stalkers?" Eva sounded a bit incredulous. "What the hell kind of normal people are you dealing with?"

"Lots of people fake their deaths. Usually for tax-reasons and insurance-fraud and stuff, but it's not that big of a stretch to use it against fiancee-wannabes, right?" Ranma frowned at her, a little bit uncertain. He knew he wasn't super-great at social stuff, but he was pretty sure this made perfect sense.

And he wasn't entirely sure if it was Nabiki or his pops that had made him think that faking your death for reasons like tax-evasion was more about common sense than anything else. Probably his pops, because Ranma didn't think Nabiki had ever shed her identity to avoid paying taxes, but then... he really wouldn't put it past her, once she got old enough that she had to deal with that stuff too.

"Oi, don't lump me in with your crew." Eva glared at him for using the 'fiancee' word to describe her relationship with the man who imprisoned her.

"You followed him around 'cause he was nice to you, and you blushed whenever he patted your head." Ranma pointed out, more than willing to use material gained from Chachazero to prove his point – even if the doll still creeped him out. "Pretty sure that kind of stuff is how I ended up with half of _my_ fiancees."

Eva made a noise, somewhere between frustration and disgust, and plomped back down on the sand. "I hate you so much."

Ranma made a vague noise, not particularly bothered by that claim. Eva hated everything at one point or another, and if she wasn't slinging ice-magic after him then she probably wasn't all that upset in truth. Or she was just really exhausted from having failed to hit him for nearly six hours of 'sparring', but in that case she'd probably have time to get over it before she decided to hold a grudge about it.

It was still true though. Ranma could understand why the Thousand Master had done what he had, he could even sympathize. If Ranma had had the ability to put his fiancees somewhere where they wouldn't follow him around anymore, he would at the very least be sorely tempted to use it.

But... Eva was someone who'd been on the road for basically her whole life, hundreds of years spent wandering the globe. What kind of sick bastard would _force_ her to spend so many years trapped in one place?

Ranma wasn't really trapped in Nerima. He could leave any time he wanted, as long as he dodged around a whole lot of trouble that would spring up from it. His pops had decided that he wanted to settle down though, and Ranma didn't really mind following in his father's wake, he'd been doing it for forever, and it'd be weird to take to the open road without having his father's back in front of him.

Not necessarily a bad kind of weird, but enough to make him hesitant about striking out on his own, even on the worst days. Not to mention Akane, and the fact that Nerima was filled to the brim with crazy stuff to keep him entertained.

What would it have been like for Eva, back then? Before she settled into this caged bitterness? Would she have been looking forward to it, to meeting new people and making friends with humans who were so much younger than herself and so woefully untouched by the realities of the world? Or would she have crashed and burned within the first couple of months?

Forcing a second childhood on someone who'd had a pretty miserable one? It sounded nice, on the surface, but-... The more Ranma thought about it, the more it sounded so conceited. A childhood was a childhood. You only got one, and if it was miserable, tough luck. Sure, you could live a happy or unhappy life afterwards, and maybe you could make the choice to experience wonderful stuff – that you didn't have a chance to during your childhood – later on in life.

But you couldn't just... go back. You were different from who you were back then, with different hang-ups and experiences, and ending up in that mess of things in order to 'live better' or whatever? That was just-... What the hell was she even supposed to do? Make friends with lots of girls whose interests were completely separated from her own? Find a cute boy who was either a creep with a thing for a girl who looked like she was ten, or find some brat that was barely hitting puberty himself? Sit through dull class after dull class, when she was used to wandering across continents?

It was just so-... Honestly, it made Ranma want to punch the Thousand Master in the face.

It was like caging someone who'd always been free to roam, just because you didn't really want them roaming in your direction. And yeah, Ranma still thought that faking his death would've been the better move. With him 'dead', Eva would've just wandered off and continued doing her own thing, and if he just kept a low profile for a decade-or-so she probably wouldn't be bothered to track him down afterwards.

Or she'd have just considered him to be enough of a cowardly asshole to wash her hands of him, which was still kind of a win? It'd certainly be less of a dick-move than him trying to justify this particular shade of cruelty as 'an opportunity for living life as a normal girl'.

People with good intentions always screwed everything up.

XXX

"A pit of cats?" Eva laughed, clutching at her stomach.

"It was a traumatic experience!" Ranma yelled at her, throwing a Moko Takabisha in her direction, which she easily sidestepped even when folded over double in laughter.

"That's so stupid!" Eva's laughter was probably more akin to a sadistic cackle at this point, but it certainly wasn't stopping.

"It was pops idea!" Ranma yelled, hurling multiple more attacks her way. "And shut up!"

Eva grinned madly at him, striking a weird pose with her hands in front of her face. "Meow meow meow!"

"Gah!" Ranma shied back from the surprisingly realistic sound.

Eva returned to cackling in glee at his misery.

Sometimes, Ranma wondered why they were friends.

XXX

 **A/n: There are a total of four chapters to this fic. Which is... honestly rather impressive, considering how I only really started writing it because I wanted to write magical theory about curses.**

 **Also, yes, I'm very much loving how these two idiots interact with each other. Eva and Ranma just... love picking fights, and having them in the same room for any extension of time is hilarious.**


	2. Chapter 2

TCoW Chapter 2

XXX

Akane stared up at the night sky. "Ranma? Do you want kids?"

"W-What?!" Ranma's head whipped around towards her, desperately trying to keep his voice down, because that'd come completely out of left field, and just... what?

"Someone told me a while back that marriage is all about compromises." Akane explained, very deliberately not looking at him. "And I was just thinking... compromises should be between the people actually getting married, not their parents, right?"

Which at least made some sense, but Ranma still really wasn't sure where the hell this conversation was going. "I dunno? I... haven't really thought about it?"

Akane made an understanding noise, and took a breath. "I think having kids some day would be nice. Way in the future." She made a frustrated face. "I kind of want to be an actress still, and kids would be really awkward to juggle with that."

They continued to sit in silence for a long while. Well, it was more a sprawl, technically, but that was because sitting on a tiled rooftop was a bit awkward.

Finally Ranma took a deep breath to brace himself. "I think I'd be a shit father."

Now it was Akane's turn to whip her head around, an offended look on her face.

Ranma didn't let her object though, because... he didn't want her to stop him right now. "I mean, I can barely look at some brat being noisy without wanting to grind their face into the floor. And-... And what the hell do I know about parenting, anyway?" He shook his head, annoyed. "Sure 'don't do what pops did' works for a bit, but that's like dodging an oncoming train. It's just common sense, not an actual clue about parenting."

Akane sighed, seemingly acknowledging the point, and leaning back a bit, even if she didn't stop looking at him. "Well, we'd probably have nearly a decade or so to figure that one out, as long as we keep our dads out of things."

"I guess." Ranma wasn't overly confident they'd manage to keep their dads out of things, because they were quite frankly both insane, and would probably be backed up by his mother and possibly even Happosai – and nothing was ever certain when Happosai was involved.

Still, it wasn't a bad plan. Pushing all the difficult stuff to some distant future was always a good idea. It was how he'd managed to avoid tearing his hair out over the craziness of his fiancees and everyone seemingly setting themselves up for a broken heart.

XXX

"What kind of job is 'the Best' anyway?" Ranma grumbled to himself, face-down in the sand.

They'd been asked to plan their future careers in school, somewhere in between a coconut-tree exploding, and Hinako-sensei getting trigger-happy in Ranma's direction – no matter who was actually causing the mess, Ranma was always the one she aimed at. Still, even though that timely intervention probably meant that they wouldn't actually need to do the assignment, Ranma hadn't really been able to stop thinking about it since.

No, wait. He'd stopped thinking about it plenty of times. The problem was that it kept coming back to bother him again whenever he turned around from dealing with whatever had been going to hell in that moment. It was like a Happosai. A Happosai that he couldn't even punt over the horizon.

Ranma had never liked homework, but this particular thing was on a whole new level of dislike. In no small part because it should be so _easy_. Except for how it wasn't.

"Martial arts tournaments?" Eva suggested, still absently fussing over her recently dislocated shoulder.

"Banned." Ranma rejected the idea, still face-down in the sand. "Happosai kept scamming and harassing the competitors, so they banned all of Anything Goes from all tournaments for forever."

"Harsh, but fair." Eva might never have encountered Happosai herself, but she'd caught one or two rumors about the perverted little troll back in the day, and Ranma had long-since confirmed them. "Teaching, then?"

Ranma glanced up at her. "You do realize that the only person who really taught me stuff is my pops, right?"

"Hooh?" Eva raised any eyebrow at him. "You didn't visit any dojos during your training-trip?"

"Sure. Walk in, find someone who looks strong, piss them off, learn the techniques when they try to beat you up, figure out the counters for the techniques, try them out, leave." Ranma summarized, before putting his face back in the sand. "I don't even know what they _do_ in dojos."

Eva made an annoyed noise. "They spar, for one."

"They get insulted, belittled, and kicked in the balls?" Ranma raised his head again, looking confused. "Why the hell would anyone pay money for that?"

Eva's jaw dropped a little and she spluttered. "Who the fuck taught you how to spar?!"

XXX

Nerima was a strange place. Not necessarily a bad kind of strange, but strange nonetheless.

Ranma knew that there were a lot more martial artists than what was normal, for one. For another, nobody had actually bothered to try to get back at the Tendo-family for Happosai's constant crime-sprees, despite the fact that everyone knew that he was the thief and that he lived in their home. Which admittedly might be something about not provoking Kuno into throwing money at the police in a public setting – to get the problem for his precious Akane to go away.

Or perhaps it was just that nobody wanted to provoke Ranma, who was one of the very _very_ few individuals who actually tried to stop Happosai, and who also lived with the Tendo-family.

Still, Nerima was a bit of a strange place.

Ranma was very much enjoying the constant stream of martial artists hunting him down for one reason or another – though he could do without any more fiancees, thank you very much – but he wasn't overly fond of everyone kidnapping Akane.

Yeah sure, it definitely motivated him into kicking their asses, but he would've happily done that anyway. There wasn't any need to drag Akane into these things, even if it seemed like every martial artist Ranma knew managed to develop a crush on the girl.

She probably would've been his favorite fiancee, if it wasn't for the fact that he was in love with her.

Shampoo was constantly being harassed by Mousse, courted by someone she obviously held nothing but contempt for. Kodachi was a nutcase who nobody in their right mind would try to get close to. And Ukyo had sort of built her entire life around Ranma one way or the other, which was kind of... awkward, for all that he still considered her a good friend.

In comparison, Akane was obviously adored by basically half the population of Japan, even if a lot of those people were as crazy as Kuno. In fact, one of them _was_ Kuno. So if Ranma ever wanted to try to avoid breaking everyone's hearts and set them up with other people, then Akane would've made it ridiculously easy to find _someone_ for her.

Unfortunately, he very much didn't actually want to set Akane up with anyone else at all, so the point was moot.

In the end, for all that the constant stream of martial artists over the last year-and-a-half was keeping him from growing ridiculously bored, and that Akane was amazingly pretty and definitely worth spending time with – even if most of the time, everything always ended up going to hell – Nerima was... one place.

Part of the reason that Ranma enjoyed going to Mahora was that it was quite the distance to travel, and he could take a roundabout route to get there. He could just... wander around for a couple of hours, exploring.

It wasn't that Ranma was feeling trapped or anything, remaining in one place just wasn't something he'd ever really had any experience with doing, and once the initial novelty had worn off-...

Ranma liked Nerima well enough, it was the only real home he could remember having, and Akane was there too. So out of all the places he'd stayed, it was definitely his favorite one. But... it was just one place, and if he closed his eyes sometimes, it was so easy to see the entire world, stretching out like an endless road.

And maybe he missed that kind of life a bit more than he would've liked to admit.

XXX

"I thought you'd be more excited, Ranma." Nabiki glanced his way, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Huh?" Ranma blinked at her. "It ain't gonna work, so why bother?"

Nabiki snorted. "Just because you've never managed to use one, doesn't mean that there isn't one."

Ranma frowned, but didn't say anything. It wasn't like he could really explain to Nabiki that the only cure to his curse was death. Or to enjoy it for long enough that it started to wither away before the end of the century. Though, considering how powerful Jusenkyo was, it'd probably still manage to last long enough for him to die off before it ever came to that.

If he tried to explain that, she'd demand to know where he'd learned about it, and Ranma really didn't want to talk about Eva where anyone in Nerima could hear him. He could already imagine his fiancees trying to pick a fight with her over spending so much time with him, and it wasn't a pretty image.

Eva was nice enough, but she reacted to threats the way a cornered animal would, and she had a _lot_ more bite in her than all of Ranma's fiancees combined.

Using a curse to counter another curse? It wouldn't work. It'd just be two curses layered on top of each other, constantly vying for attention in the worst possible ways.

Maybe if Ranma was cursed into becoming an undead it'd work. But the only reason for that would be because he wouldn't be alive anymore. After all, the Jusenkyo curses were all about the dead and drowning cursing the living to take their shapes and suffer, and if Ranma was undead he probably wouldn't be 'alive' enough to count. Which would mean that the curse would 'slip', and then he'd be cured. Or something.

He'd have to make sure not to be turned into an undead as a girl, and he'd still be, you know, undead. So that was a different kind of misery that Ranma didn't really want to experience. At least as a girl, his skin was still warm, and his chi was still the same as it always was, even if it sometimes felt like it 'tasted' differently. Not that Ranma would ever admit that to anyone, no matter how loudly Happosai might yell about it from the rooftops. Ranma was a boy, not a girl, regardless of whether or not his chi was tainted by the same curse as the rest of his body.

Curse or no curse, Ranma's skin was warm, his chi flowed the same as it always did, and the Art came to him as naturally as breathing.

Perhaps the body-heat wouldn't be so very noticeable if he didn't go around hugging people or whatever, and Eva's own ability with martial arts proved that undead could definitely learn the basics of the techniques. But his chi? The energy that fueled his attacks, that bolstered his body, and drove him to new heights of impossible skill with every breath that he took?

Chi only existed in living things.

And that kind of put things in perspective.

XXX

"How much stronger do you become by drinking blood anyway?" Ranma asked, trying to ignore the way his arm itched from her teeth. It was like a giant mosquito-bite.

Happosai and Hinako were both something like chi-vampires, but neither of them really became stronger from it. Hinako grew older and it was good for her health, and Happosai seemed to have achieved his own version of immortality from it, but if they ever did it in a battle it was more about taking out their opponent by draining their chi or to heal from an injury, rather than for powering up a devastating attack.

In comparison, from what Eva had described, she actually became stronger from drinking blood. Temporarily, and it was apparently more trouble than it was worth to go around draining everyone of blood, but there seemed to be a clear difference.

Eva grunted from where she'd been staring blankly at the sky of her resort. "Depends on the blood."

Ranma frowned slightly, trying to remember if she'd tried explaining this before. "How does that work?"

"Not great." Eva scoffed.

Ranma made an annoyed noise, and started leveraging himself back up into a sitting position from his own crater, but Eva apparently decided to spare him from demanding an actual explanation rather than a joke.

"Unless they bleed liquid-fucking-magic? It's negligible." She sighed. "A couple of centuries ago I was weak enough that it mattered, and nowadays I'd need the boost if I wanted to use magic properly outside of here, because of this damn curse. But yeah, beyond keeping me fed, it's useless."

"Ever met anyone bleeding liquid magic before?" Ranma felt a bit curious.

"Not likely." Eva scoffed. "Found a couple with enough of an affinity to keep fire-magic from exploding in my face for a couple of hours, until I burnt the 'taste' out of their blood, but that's pretty much it."

Ranma hummed, trying to sort that out. "So, is there a limit to how much you can drink, before you start swelling up like a balloon like a proper mosquito?"

There was a pause, and then Eva's killing-intent started to rise to the forefront again. "Swelling up like a what now?"

Ranma knew better than to answer her before he was a safe distance away, and by the time he made it out of the crater, Eva had already started forming icicles, so there wasn't much point in answering at all.

Not that that stopped him. "You drink blood, your bites itch, and your incantations are about as annoying as those buzzing-noises. So, a mosquito."

There was a cry of outrage, and then he was back to dodging for his life.

Eva was definitely his best friend.

XXX

One of the big guidelines of Ranma's life was to not grow up to be like his father.

It wasn't that he hated Genma or anything, he just very much didn't want to become him. And that wasn't just because Genma tended towards cowardice whenever he thought he could get away with it.

Ranma knew that the man was proud of him, for all of his constant bemoaning of having an ungrateful son. Honestly, Ranma wouldn't be surprised if Genma had gone out of his way to make sure that Ranma wouldn't grow up to be like himself, the old man could be sneaky like that.

In the end, the exact details of it weren't the most important. Ranma didn't want to look back on his actions and realize how similar they were to his own father's, even if that meant that he'd probably have to do things he didn't want to do. He was a martial artist, he'd survive.

No, the problem was something that Akane had said, months ago, a few months after that disastrous attempted wedding.

What did he want out of marriage?

The short of it was that he wanted to spend time with Akane, and maybe do... some things... later on... someday. Ranma mostly tried not to think about the details of that distant possible day, because he was pretty sure that Akane would somehow manage to pick up on it and nail him in the face whilst he was distracted. Not that he wouldn't deserve it.

No, that wasn't the part of the question that actually mattered in this case.

What did Ranma want out of his future? Out of a marriage? Out of a romance that spanned for the rest of his life?

Ignoring all the stuff about Akane, and wanting her to be happy, and their father's dropping the fate of the dojo in their laps. Ignoring all of the stuff that wasn't _Ranma_ , what did he want out of marriage?

So far, his only real idea was to spend time with Akane, and to travel around and show her some of the beautiful places he'd seen during his life on the road. Except... Akane wasn't overly fond of living on the road, and the whole point of marrying Akane was to make sure that she would smile at him. She wouldn't smile if she was constantly grumpy.

Ranma wanted to wander the world, picking fights with strong martial artists, stumbling across crazy situations and beautiful sceneries, bickering and laughing together with her over food, and sleeping under the starry night sky.

The problem was mainly that he couldn't imagine it being Akane that he was bickering and laughing together with. It was a great image, but it just wouldn't really stick properly, because Akane didn't like living on the road.

Also, whenever the two of them started to bicker, it felt like one of them would storm off in a huff, sooner or later. It wasn't like arguing with Genma, where one of them finally managed to get a direct hit and the other one went down like a sack of bricks, and then back to arguing about something else the moment they recovered. Or like with Eva, where they'd crow and cackle at rubbing the other one's face in the dirt, and then go back to bickering without ever really considering holding a grudge over it – except maybe for a few hours, when some form of petty vengeance could be had.

With Akane, arguments actually mattered. Akane would usually forgive him within a day or two, but that was just it. She had to forgive him, whereas with Genma and Eva both, forgiveness wasn't really on the table in the first place, because their arguments didn't matter at all. It was just fun to argue about stuff, and beat each other up, and mock each other, and just generally being petty in new and interesting ways.

It was a bit like Ranma's arguments with Ryoga, except Ryoga was a lot more dedicated to holding grudges. Also, him getting lost all of the time – not to mention the P-chan debacle that Ranma really wasn't going to touch with a stick, because he'd given his word – kind of ruined a lot of the quick and fun back-and-forth.

Regardless, Ranma wanted to marry Akane, because he loved her. Also, because he loved her, he didn't want to drag her out on the road, where she'd be grumpy and miserable, and basically forced to stick with him even whenever she wanted to properly storm off in a huff.

The other option then, was to leave Akane at home, and run off on his own. Except that was a great big 'Genma-like behavior'-flag, and Ranma wanted nothing to do with it.

Unable to take her with him, and unable to leave her behind, the only option that remained was to not go. To remain at home, and not leave.

It'd been nearly two years since he arrived in Nerima, and Ranma had taken plenty of breaks in the form of fighting off crazy phoenix-gods over in China, training-trips, and rescue-missions. And he still felt like he would've gone stir-crazy if it hadn't been for his tendency to take roundabout paths to Mahora a few times a week.

Could he really last for years upon years of this?

Sure, Akane was amazing, and Nerima was an interesting kind of place... but how much of this constant lack of traveling could he really survive?

XXX

Akane sighed. "We're not going to get married, are we?"

Ranma gritted his teeth for a moment, before forcefully relaxing with a sigh of his own. "Doesn't look like it."

Akane bumped her shoulder to his, a wry smile on her face. "One down, two to go." She wrinkled her nose. "Three if you count Kodachi."

Ranma made a face at the thought of including Kodachi among his 'official' fiancees, but didn't argue the point. He squeezed his eyes shut. "I wish-..."

Akane sighed again. "Yeah, me too."

It'd been nearly a full month since Ranma finally told Akane what he wanted from his future. She hadn't been surprised, and together they'd been poking at it ever since, trying to come up with some kind of sensible solution.

Neither of them had really been expecting a solution to appear though, and so this was the two of them finally giving up.

Unofficially, mind you. Akane was still the girl 'most likely to marry Ranma', so if she threw in the towel before he had some kind of plan for the rest of his fiancees, things would escalate very quickly.

Shampoo and the Amazons would chase him to the ends of the earth, Ukyo had built most of her life around him one way or the other, and Kodachi was rich enough to make herself a menace no matter where he went. Simply legging it out of Nerima early one morning wouldn't really help matters.

He needed to give all of them reason to break off their attempts to marry him. Which meant that, for the Amazons he needed to make it impossible for him to produce children with Shampoo, that ought to do it, though he doubted that 'common medicine' could pull off something that their weird medicine couldn't reverse. Ukyo... maybe something similar would work, maybe it wouldn't. Kodachi was just a mess, and honestly Ranma would absolutely fake his own death in some dramatic manner to convince her that he was lost to her forevermore.

The Amazons would never fall for a faked death though, and both Ukyo and Kodachi would be paying attention to how they'd react, so that option was basically out.

Heck, the only thing Ranma was convinced the Amazons couldn't cure was curses. They were big on doling them out, and their medicine was sometimes messed up enough that it might classify as a curse all on its own, but up against things like Jusenkyo? The Amazons hadn't ever managed to find a cure.

Ranma would rather cut off a limb than play around with Jusenkyo again, so that was also out. And the only other curse he knew about that was that powerful was-...

Ranma blinked, straightening up.

"Did you think of something?" Akane asked, sounding curious.

"Dunno." Ranma frowned. "But she's gonna murder me for suggesting it, so either way I won't have to worry about it anymore."

Akane choked down a small giggle, and Ranma gave her a wry grin in return.

Eva might enjoy drinking his blood, but the only time he'd ever brought up her turning other people into vampires? He hadn't managed to make her that coldly furious since. So suggesting it as a valid alternative to 'faking' his own death? She'd blast him to smithereens.

But yeah, that'd solve his problems, one way or the other. And what a way to go.

XXX

"If you'd let me explain-...!" Ranma dodged around another icicle inches away from where his head had been.

Eva didn't respond. She hadn't responded at all.

He'd brought up the possibility, and she hadn't said a word since. She'd been throwing icicles and glaciers and spears of what was probably 'darkness', but outside of her chanting, she hadn't said a word.

That was why Ranma knew she was upset.

Eva loved to rant at him, and to cackle with sadistic glee whenever he was too busy dodging to attack. Silence? That meant that something was wrong.

Ranma had a pretty good clue about what that something was, and it all came down to Ranma's very sneaky plan to get away from the Amazons without having to spend the rest of his life running. Traveling was fine, traveling was what he wanted to do, 'running' was another thing entirely.

From Ranma's best guesses, Eva had been forcibly turned at a young age, and then been put through hell as a result of people freaking out over her being a vampire and making a big deal of her drinking a bit of blood. She'd lost her chance to grow up as a regular kid, she'd lost her chance at puberty making people treat her as an adult instead of as a kid, she'd ended up having to kill lots of people just to stay alive, and then some romantic do-good-er locked her in a middle-school for nearly a decade because that's exactly what kids her age needed, right?

In some way, everything that'd gone to shit in Eva's life, could probably be traced back to Eva being turned into a vampire. And Ranma wouldn't doubt that Eva – following her own vague code of honor – had decided to never _ever_ turn anyone else into a vampire, sentencing them to the same hell she'd gone through.

Ranma knew perfectly well that this was a long shot. He might've played it off as a joke with Akane, but the odds of him surviving this weren't great.

It really all came down to his own personal decision not to grow up like his old man. He wouldn't run if he didn't need to, and he wouldn't screw people over just because he could. If anyone dealt with his shit, it was going to be himself. And if he couldn't deal with it, then it was better to go down in a brief blaze of glory.

Bad things had been piling on on top of him for nearly two-and-a-half years now. The Nekoken wasn't an issue, who cared about the stupid c-cats. The gender-flipping crap he could've done without, but it was a curse he was stuck with, and he'd resigned himself to that a long time ago. Akane being amazing but long term incompatible in what they wanted from life? That'd stung. Not to the point of suicidal stupidity, certainly not to the point of trying to discard his life entirely.

It kind of just... put things in perspective.

Unless Ranma could pull some _other_ ridiculously high-level martial artist out of the woodwork, and have Shampoo fall in love with them in a way that didn't make the old bat really suspicious, the Amazons were never going to leave until they'd nabbed him. And sure, they'd happily try to convince him in public with only a little bit of crazy plotting, but once Ranma got the other fiancees off his back? Well... nobody would be paying all that much attention to his romantic prospects anymore, would they? And then... all they really needed to do was get lucky with some love-spell of theirs once, and the game was up.

Ranma might not have been terribly opposed to sleeping with Shampoo, but despite his feelings about 'not wanting to become like Genma', he was still proud to call the stupid panda his pops. Genma deserved a lot of shit for a lot of things, but in comparison to Ranma's mom, who'd just... said goodbye to her child and then carried on with her life? Ranma would rather take Genma's route.

No way in hell was Ranma dropping his kids into an isolated village where they weren't allowed to grow up however they might want to.

If Shampoo wanted to have kids with Ranma, it'd be without the Amazon village hanging over the heads of their children. At that point, maybe Ranma would be willing to go along with it. Give or take a few years to actually feel anything other than vague paranoia about Shampoo – or outright terror, in regards to her cursed form.

With that in mind, Ranma had the option of continuing to run away from the Amazons for the rest of his life, until he was old and gray, and probably about as bitterly insane as Happosai. Or he could take a stand and go down swinging, preferably against someone who deserved it or who wouldn't be too hurt by it.

At least if he died to Eva, the vampire would feel like she had a bit more control over her life again.

It wouldn't be a happy kind of feeling, probably. But if she was stuck here for another century? A small boost of feeling in control would go a long way to keep her from going completely around the bend from the endless repetition and frustration.

Ranma didn't really _want_ to die to Eva, because he kind of wanted to return to the road and wander wherever it might take him, and dumping his death on Eva's shoulders also probably wasn't the nicest idea, but-...

He was sick and tired of dying by inches. Of watching things slowly slip out of his grip like sand through his fingers.

Either he convinced Eva to do something she'd decided to never do, or she'd kill him.

Ranma launched himself skywards before the ice he'd landed on had a chance to catch his feet. "I'm pretty sure that if you raise me, I won't-...!" He kicked off an icicle that tried to skewer him. "The curse will think that there's two of you, and that's-...!" Vaulting over a glacier that tried to crush him. "So it's not like it's only for me-...!"

"Do you really believe that I'd be so unwilling to wait for another century, Saotome Ranma?" Eva finally spoke up, voice perfectly even.

And that was fair enough. It was true that Ranma's brief understanding of how these kind of curses worked meant that they'd sort of fall apart on themselves if she managed to 'breathe un-life' into someone. Or, at the very least, it'd give her a heck of a lot of leverage to break free on her own.

But that was that, and this was this. Trying to convince Eva with what she had to gain from this wasn't going to work, because she'd already made her decision.

"Sure, you can wait all you want, midget!" Ranma twirled around a few very well-aimed spears of darkness. "But I can't! I can't wait for my curse to run out, I can't wait for my fiancees to leave me alone, I can't-...!" Ranma took a deep breath as he kicked off from another icicle, having long since learnt not to kick off from the spears of darkness. "There's nothing to wait for, you shitty vampire! All I've got is this or spending the rest of my life running! And if I've gotta die, I'd rather die to someone I like!"

And then there was a face inches away from his, with eyes like molten lead.

\- a hit that sent him spiraling out of control through the air-

\- ice and ice and ice and darkness and fingers wrapping around his neck-

\- impact- and blackness-

XXX

 **A/n:** **I don't doubt that Ranma and Akane love each other lots, the problem I'm always left feeling with them is that they just don't really... see each other in their 'dream futures'. They want to be together, yes, but there's a certain lack of** _ **how**_ **. Which is part of what I used to break them up, this time around.**

 **The whole point of dating for an** _ **arranged marriage**_ **is to actually spend the rest of your lives together, after all. (Rather than regular dating, which is more about "being happy together".) So the both of them having such incompatible future desires is... a difficult obstacle to overcome, even if they weren't already something like a powder-keg waiting to blow with both of their tempers and various hang-ups.**


	3. Chapter 3

TCoW Chapter 3

XXX

"I always assumed you'd been taking too many hits to the skull over the years, but this definitely proves it." Eva grumbled to herself.

"It's... a good... idea..." Ranma argued, hissing out each breath through broken ribs and a bruised throat.

"Not much of a life, is it, if you won't have your precious martial arts to play with?" Eva scoffed.

"Chi is... just chi..." Ranma knew that it wasn't, knew exactly how horrifically empty he'd probably end up if they went through with it. But he'd take a hollow kind of existence over one where he had to flee from one place to another, never able to trust that some Amazons weren't setting up an ambush that might get lucky enough to drag him off to their village as a breeding-stud in the aftermath.

He'd learned to live with his curse, and he'd overcome his own body turning on him time and again. But he'd taken enough hits from weird magical things to be supremely wary of whatever the Amazons might be keeping in reserve.

Eva made a warning growl deep in her throat. "Just kill them and be done with it."

Ignoring that Ranma doubted he was ever really going to be up for murder, outside of immediate hostage-situations and vengeance-fueled rampages, that really wouldn't work. "Whole... village..."

"Please, as if you couldn't figure out a way to wipe a village off the map." Eva shook her head in disgust. "Soft-hearted idiot."

"That's... why..." Ranma took another pained breath, starting again. "Ain't... nobody... deserving... being trapped..."

Eva stared down at him for a long moment, eyes still glowing golden. "Good intentions always screw things up. Wasn't that what you said?"

Ranma grinned up at her through bloodied teeth. "Who's got... good intentions...? I'm just... doing it... for tax-evasion..."

Eva snorted a laugh, shaking her head. "Sure, and I'm the bloody queen of England."

There was a long moment of silence, before Eva turned back to him.

Eye contact, and then a flash of white fangs. "Hold still."

Ranma didn't so much as breathe.

XXX

It felt a little bit like having some kind of fizzy-drink for blood.

It tingled and itched and it kept slipping in between his fingers whenever he tried to do anything with it, even as it refused to remain still when he didn't want to use it.

Magic was the worst.

"Shut up, I'm trying to concentrate." Eva growled absently from where she was hunched over her calculations of the barrier that was imprisoning her.

"She zapped me!" Ranma pointed at Chachazero, still more than a little tingly.

Eva glanced up from her calculations, to give him a blistering glare. "I'm sure she can be convinced to turn you inside-out instead."

Chachazero cackled to herself at the ominous promise in Eva's voice, but Ranma wasn't overly concerned about it. Honestly, being turned inside-out might help him figure out how to get this stupid not-chi stuff to stop itching under his skin.

Ranma threw a suspicious glance at his fingertips as Eva returned to her prison-break plans. He was pretty sure he'd just seen them spark, and he'd be damned before he let his own body electrocute him.

The only option was therefore obviously to try to channel it into blasting apart Chachazero.

He knew he ought to be grateful that his body's abundance of chi had left a kind of 'hole' for magic to fill up when it'd disappeared because Ranma had been turned. Magic was everywhere and flowed into all things, but a vampire was entirely fueled by it, and apparently a highly developed ability to manipulate chi translated into some decently sized 'magical reserves' when the chi simply disappeared.

It wasn't like Ranma had the faintest clue as to how he was supposed to use it though. Chi was like a fire of fighting-spirit, determination and a reflection of yourself. Magic was... _everything_ all at once.

Ranma threw a punch, and then desperately dodged out of the way before Chachazero could skewer him on her overly large knife. His subconscious kept trying to reinforce his limbs with chi, and not only did magic just slip through his fingers all the time, the few times he'd managed it nothing happened. Or, well, something happened, but it sure as hell wasn't what Ranma felt should've happened.

According to Eva's best guess – before she'd given up and gone back to trying to leverage Ranma's existence as a way to break down her own prison – chi in many ways simply followed the will of its user. Chi wanted to be used in the way the user wanted to use it, because chi was part of the user. Magic wanted to be used in the same way electricity wanted to be used. You could channel it and make use of it, but it was going to do what it wanted to do, and if you didn't know what you were doing you'd likely blow yourself up before managing anything useful.

Another lunge from Chachazero, and another desperate dodge from Ranma who still felt like his legs had fallen asleep. And then another zap, as Chachazero's magic reacted to Ranma's magic when he tried to punch her in retaliation, and Ranma hurried out of the way to try and shake some life back into his suddenly-numb hand.

Of all the damn things that could've happened, suddenly accidentally becoming an undead mage really hadn't been something he'd been expecting, and at this point Ranma would've happily traded it away if it meant he didn't have to deal with all of this constant itching. And the weird magic-zapping, because that was annoying and kind of painful.

"Stand still!" Chachazero cheered happily. "Master wants to see your insides!"

"That's just you!" Ranma yelled back at her, because Eva only said that because she didn't want to listen to him whining. "If you'd just tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do instead-...!"

He was interrupted by another gleeful lunge from the homicidal doll.

Ranma had almost forgotten how much he didn't like Chachazero. It'd simply slipped into the background for months now, and he wasn't entirely happy about being reminded.

Ranma's leg jerked halfway into another desperate dodge, and then suddenly he was about four stories into the air. Without anywhere to land, with little to no ability to choose how to hit the ground, and without any control over the magic that had 'helped' him with his movement.

Four stories up, without anything to break his fall. This was definitely going to suck.

Oh well, at least broken bones seemed to heal within a few minutes now, rather than a couple of carefully chi-regulated days. That didn't mean it stopped hurting though.

XXX

Ranma frowned to himself, as he continued running away from Chachazero.

It was fizzing everywhere, tingling under his skin, itching in his veins. Magic sure was annoying.

But then... if he just... lightened the pressure like so-... Ranma stumbled as he nearly launched himself into a wall, and then threw himself to the floor to avoid the knife that would've skewered him if he hadn't.

She could keep up with it? Ranma couldn't keep up with it, and he was doing it, so she must be predicting it. Who the hell taught the creepy doll how to fight against people who could basically teleport?

Not that Ranma was anywhere near that, yet. But it made sense, so if he just-... Ranma was suddenly five stories up in the air, but that shouldn't be a problem because magic was everywhere so he just needed to-... Ranma barely managed to break his fall before he fast-moved straight into the ground at a speed he couldn't even really perceive.

Huh. That was pretty dangerous.

Eva made an annoyed noise, apparently having noticed Ranma's sudden control over his random bursts of magic. "Of course, the moment you get the vaguest handle on it, and you go straight to mid-air instant movement."

"This stuff has a name?" Ranma glared at her, more than a bit annoyed. "You've been holding out on me!"

"If you can't fly worth for shit, that's your own fault." Eva waved her hand dismissively. "I never signed up for teaching you anything."

That was fair enough, but Ranma was still annoyed, because from the way she'd been talking he was pretty sure that this was a technique that he might've been able to replicate with chi, back when he'd been alive. He didn't regret his choice in becoming undead, but he would've very much enjoyed kicking his way through the air through a number of his fights.

Still, he hadn't actually dealt with Chachazero yet, so he hurriedly took off again, before the doll managed to plant a knife in him again. He didn't care if he healed up in seconds, it still hurt like hell.

XXX

It was very... flashy.

That was Ranma's final opinion on Eva's jailbreak.

Ignoring that she apparently went out of her way to explode the lawns of as many people as she could – and very specifically ruining the piping on her math-teacher's apartment forevermore – the actual curse-breaking included a pretty big light-show.

It was also a bit weird, because Eva was more-or-less vibrating in place out of sheer anticipated glee, and the sight of it was perhaps mildly unsettling. In comparison to the time she'd worn cat-ears just to give him hives, it wasn't too bad, but it was still weird.

Eva would've probably savored the whole experience much more, if she hadn't been so very determined to get the hell out of Mahora as fast as she could. Not that Ranma was complaining, having a running battle with some of the teachers – who'd been trying to stop Eva from blowing up everything that'd ever annoyed her ever – had been a lot of fun.

He couldn't really do much about it, but jumping around and randomly tripping people was apparently a really efficient way of fighting, when you had someone behind you throwing glaciers at the people who'd tripped.

Ranma had joined forces with a few of his rivals and outright enemies at times, but even when they weren't trying to stab each other in the back, it was more that they worked around each other than that they really worked together. Fighting alongside Eva was very different.

All Ranma really had to do was distract them and delay their attempts at reaching Eva, allowing her to set up some of her more extreme spells – the ones with those ridiculously long incantations – and then get the hell out of the way when those spells came crashing down on people who'd been temporarily immobilized.

It made it all the more obvious that Chachazero had been created as an attempt to get around her own weak-spots. And Ranma was perfectly willing to rub doing a better job at it in the doll's stupid face.

Still, with Eva's jailbreak accomplished, and Ranma feeling pretty functional – no matter how awkwardly uncomfortable with magic sparking under his skin – despite being dead, that left them with the real question. Namely, wherever the hell where they supposed to go next?

XXX

"What do you mean 'Nerima'?" Ranma glared at her.

"I'm not dealing with your fiancees tracking us down for some ridiculous reason and drawing weird conclusions." Eva scoffed. "You can damn well go back there and say 'bye' like a sensible person."

"How is saying 'bye' sensible?" Ranma whined. He knew perfectly well 'how'. The easiest way to describe it was by saying that his pops would've never bothered with it, so obviously it was a good idea. That didn't mean he had to like it.

Eva aimed a kick at him, which he dodged. "People like having someone to blame. But blaming dead people is weird, so just say 'hello I'm dead now, bye forever', and you're practically golden."

Ranma sincerely doubted that was actually how it was going to work, but then he didn't really disagree with the idea in the first place – though for somewhat different reasons. He just didn't want to do it.

"Hah! Scaredy-cat!" Chachazero chimed in gleefully from where she skipped ahead of them. "Scared of cats and a scaredy-cat!"

"Shut up!" Ranma aimed a kick at her, and then ended up distracted from their actual journey by it devolving into a full-on fight when Chachazero responded by bringing out her knife again.

Eva didn't so much pay attention to them as she continued walking along, by now thoroughly exasperated at their antics, though their fight managed to stay within sight of her at all times.

Even Chachazero, the stupid-looking doll that she was, wasn't weak enough that she couldn't pay attention to where they were fighting. And both of them could fight a running battle just fine.

And besides, like hell was Ranma going to send Eva into Nerima on her own. She'd probably flatten the whole district with a glacier the first time someone mistook her for a little girl. Not to mention whatever the hell she might do to anyone trying to attack or declare their undying love for her.

Best to stick around and keep an eye on that.

XXX

"Oh my." Kasumi actually looked a bit worried this time.

Ranma did his best to ignore his pops breaking out in tears over how his ungrateful son had completely ruined his chance at having grandkids. Genma would crawl out of his surprise pity-party sooner or later, and until then it was either ignore him or punt him into the pond. And if Genma landed in the pond, then Eva might be tempted to give him hypothermia for being annoying, and that really wouldn't help anything.

Akane made a low noise of sudden dawning understanding. "'Either way', Ranma?" Akane sounded honestly more than a bit upset. "I thought-... You were planning on getting killed either way, weren't you?!"

Ranma winced, and Akane grabbed at the nearest heavy object to hurt him with for being stupidly reckless, but Eva raised a hand. "Ranma." She turned towards him with glowing eyes. "What's this about setting out to get killed?"

Oh yeah, he hadn't actually mentioned the fact that it'd seemed like a decent way to give Eva a bit of control in her life as a prisoner. He'd just implied that it was worth the risk to suggest being turned to Eva, and that going out in a blaze of glory wasn't a terrible option if that wasn't on the table.

Ranma glanced around, and spotted Chachazero. Chachazero who was currently bouncing with giddy anticipation of whatever hellish torture Eva would expose him to for 'having good intentions'.

No help on that front, not that he'd really been expecting it. "In my defense, a battle to the death like that would've been a pretty cool way to go."

"He's making puns, master! Kill him for his insolence!" Chachazero piped up with cheerful wrath from her corner.

Things kind of deteriorated from there. And Genma did indeed get hypothermia when he inevitably landed in the pond. He survived though. That was more than could be said about the furniture, and the wall.

XXX

"I don't know what you think you were up to, but there are more than a few techniques to grow them back." Cologne grinned at him, glancing meaningfully towards his crotch.

Ranma had very much suspected that something like that would always be on the table, because the Amazons were anything if not resourceful, but that didn't mean having the wrinkled old hag staring at his crotch any less disturbing.

"Grow what back?" Ranma pretended at stupidity, suppressing the very Eva-like urge to cackle at having outwitted the old hag. "My chi? Sorry old crone, but that ship's sailed. I ain't alive enough to have chi anymore."

Cologne paused, a slow frown forming on her face, before it started to rapidly pale. "W-What have you done?"

"Doom! Doom! Doom!" Chachazero tried to set the mood, waving her little arms around in support of Eva entering the restaurant. It was completely unnecessary, and honestly the only reason Ranma even noticed the doll was that he'd gotten a bit used to Eva when she decided to really make an entrance.

Eva might be a midget in her true form, and she wasn't a bad person or anything, no matter what she had to say about it. But her presence? This was very much the kind of evil vampire who'd gone down in legends so terrifying that it was told to small children to get them to behave.

So when Eva decided to make an entrance by calmly opening the door, ignoring both the sign saying 'temporarily closed' as well as the fact that it was locked? Whatever line of thought Cologne had been on, she was now thoroughly distracted from it.

"Ranma." Eva glared at him, eyes glowing golden in the gloom of what had moments ago been a brightly lit shop. "Don't make me wait."

Ranma huffed at her. "Yeah yeah, let's get out of here before some Kuno declares their undying love for either of us." He threw a jaunty wave in Cologne's direction. "Have fun, old crone!"

And then they were gone.

Ukyo had pulled her spatula on Eva and been blasted into the floor, and though Ranma had apologized for the damage, he very much hadn't apologized for Eva defending herself. There'd been a lot of bitter tears on that end, and Ranma really could've gone without having to deal with that, even if she'd been willing to give up on chasing him down by the end of it.

Genma had more or less settled into resignation of Ranma's recklessness, in large part because Ranma had still managed to kick the old panda into the pond when they sparred. He wasn't happy about it, but the whole thing was kind of out of his hands, and it wasn't like a cure for vampirism was ever going to pop up out of the woodwork so there wasn't any point to gripe about it. As long as Ranma didn't slack off with his training.

Ryoga hadn't been anywhere in the neighborhood, so whether he'd be as willing to give up trying to beat Ranma into a pulp for one-reason-or-another was still up for debate. But then hopefully he'd be distracted by something else, before he could think to give chase. He was a rival and a kind-of-almost-friend, but Ranma was pretty sure that the whole 'technically cured from his curse'-part of Ranma's new un-life would make things really awkward. So Ranma was hoping to be able to skip out on it entirely.

Akane was still upset with Ranma for apparently not having joked about how very lethal his escape-plan had been, but it was what it was, and she'd already known that she'd be unlikely to see him again after all of this. It was a painful kind of goodbye, but it wasn't-... It wasn't a bad one.

Kuno they'd managed to dodge – both of them – though there'd been a few close calls along the way to the Amazons and their restaurant.

Shampoo had thankfully been out, so Ranma hadn't been forced to pry the girl off of him to get out of there. Also, he hadn't been forcibly reminded of how his body-temperature wasn't what it used to be, which had been nice. Cologne would be able to tell Shampoo what'd happened anyway, and Ranma wasn't overly shook up about the idea of dodging that particular scene of violence.

From the face the old crone had made when Eva entered the restaurant, she'd known very well what kind of enemy she'd be making if she let Shampoo run after him, so they should be safe on that front. No way in hell would the old crone risk her great-something granddaughter, no matter what Shampoo had to say about it.

Ranma was officially free from Nerima, and now-...

Now the road stretched out endlessly before them.

XXX

Mundus Magicus.

Ranma had very much felt like punting someone when he'd first heard about a whole magical world with thousands upon thousands of strong people and complicated fighting-styles. An itching kind of frustration towards the fact that Ranma had been stuck dealing with bizarre and not-really-combat-oriented martial arts – and Kuno – when he could maybe have been picking fights with things that would've made Happosai turn tail and run.

It wasn't that he thought that he'd have beaten them all and become the greatest ever, but just-... Ranma lived for the Art, and being told that he'd only seen a fraction of it because an entire planet worth of people had run off to have mountain-shattering fist-fights elsewhere?

When he'd first heard of it, and realized that it was locked away in a way that meant he couldn't immediately leg it in that direction and throw himself head-first into whatever craziness came at him? There'd definitely been a degree of bitterness involved.

Eva had mostly smacked that out of his head within a couple of hours, way back then, because honestly a lot of their 'fighting-styles' amounted to having decided to combine a few unusual spells together.

Sure, there were monsters – like herself and the Thousand Master, to name a few – but in general Mundus Magicus was pretty low on the ground as far as variety was concerned. Figure out the trick to beat one mage, and you've figured out the trick to beat about half the population out of hand.

In some way, the same argument could be made for martial arts in Nerima. No matter how you throw a punch, some parts of how you're doing it are always going to remain the same. It made it easier to swallow that Ranma had been stuck in Nerima without even knowing about whatever wonders Mundus Magicus could have.

Actually going there though?

Ranma was more than a bit giddy at the prospect. And not even Chachazero making weird remarks about it was going to drag his mood down.

It was a bit funny to see Eva aim a kick at the doll though, whenever she came too close to mocking Eva instead. Though exactly how 'popping cherries' – whatever the hell that meant – was annoying to Eva, Ranma didn't know.

XXX

 **A/n: I did mention that "crack-ship" was totally a motivation for when I started writing this fic, right? Because it was. A small part, in comparison to the magical theory of curses, but oh boy was it present.**

 **Yes, the truth is that Chachazero is Ranma's true love-! Pft hahah, no.**


	4. Chapter 4 and Epilogue

TCoW Chapter 4

XXX

"Honestly, I'm surprised it took us this long." Ranma admitted, dodging out of the way of some pretty nasty-looking magic.

"What, to get into a fight?" Eva scoffed, sending more of those icicle-spears that turned the things they touched into icicles too, in the direction of their attackers. "We've gotten into plenty of fights before this one."

Which was true, they'd been in Mundus Magicus for nearly a week, and there'd been magic thrown around in fights since about five minutes into entering what was an entirely separated planet. Something about 'Evangeline AK McDowell' being officially known as the full name of 'the Dark Evangel', and how Eva hadn't really bothered to be subtle with her passport. As in, someone had tried to arrest her for her heinous crimes, and she blasted them through a wall until they stopped sending reinforcement after them.

But no, that was one thing. That was just Eva reminding everyone that there was a reason that nobody ever actually tried to arrest her – despite the sizable bounty on her head.

This was another thing entirely. This was a bunch of crazies who wanted to end the world or some such nonsense.

Now, Ranma didn't have the most experience with crazies who didn't want to get into his pants, but crazies were still crazies, and this was all very nostalgic-feeling.

"No, I mean-..." Ranma smacked away one guy who clearly didn't know how to throw a punch. "That was just law-enforcement being annoying! Running from them is old hat!" He dodged another nasty-looking spell, frowning a bit at how very good at running away that particular mage was. Really made it hard to stop them from throwing those spells around. "This? This is the crazies, Eva! I bet you a Kuno runs this whole shebang!"

Eva nearly tripped over nothing, turning around to glare at him. "Don't jinx it!"

"We're the Cosmo Entelecheia! We do this because it's the only way to save the world, and we can't have the Dark Evangel throwing off our plans!" Some faceless mook said, which kind of just proved Ranma's point.

If they hadn't wanted to get Eva involved, they should've just pretended that she wasn't around. This was _exactly_ the kind of tactic a Kuno would think of.

It was still a fun fight though, so Ranma wasn't going to complain overly much.

XXX

"Isn't this a bit excessive?" Ranma nudged a cultist-member with his toe, not particularly concerned.

Eva glanced up at him from where she was sprawled across the couch that had somehow miraculously survived their most recent fight against the Cosmo-whatchits-people. "They attacked us first."

Oh, Ranma wasn't complaining about the violence. "No, no." Ranma shook his head, motioning instead towards the whole building. "I mean, are we seriously going to hunt down this entire cult of crazies just because they attacked us that one time?"

It'd been nearly two months, and they very much hadn't stopped yet.

"Did you have anything else planned?" Eva huffed at him, slumping back into her sprawl once she realized that he wasn't criticizing the fact that there were bodies strewn all across the place.

He hadn't. But still-... "Are we doing this just so you can prove that it isn't a Kuno in charge?"

There was a suspiciously long moment of silence. "You can't prove anything."

Well, if she was going to play that card, then Ranma was going to play the brain-bleach card. Just because he could. "I'm pretty sure Chachazero would be included in a Kuno's strike-zone."

There was a twitch from Eva that was very likely to be a horrified shudder. Ranma could feel a smirk building on his face.

"Why, a Kuno would probably have enough money to throw at the problem that they could figure out how to have kids with her." Ranma continued, eyes sparkling with carefully hidden sadistic glee.

"Right." Eva launched herself to her feet, kicked the closest still-breathing body over so that it was face-up, and leaned in very close to their face. "You're alive, right? Tell me everything about your boss, or I'll rip out your entrails through your nose."

"I won't-...!"

Eva sighed and interrupted the defiance by stepping on the poor sod's crotch. Hard. "Great. You're loyal. I don't care. I need the idiot over there to stop talking, and the only chance of that ever happening is a good fight or better food." She glanced around herself meaningfully. "And none of you look particularly tasty."

There were a few other noises of protest from the cultist Eva was interrogating, but it all amounted to getting stomped on the crotch a few more times until they submitted.

"To inspire such immediate violence." Chachazero sighed, a little forlorn. "Truly, how could I stand between it?" She turned her creepy little doll eyes to Ranma, expression still frozen in that creepy smile of hers. "Does that make you my daddy?"

"Gah!"

Ranma wasn't entirely sure if it was himself or Eva who said it. It might even have been the cultist who'd been reflexively stomped in the crotch again. Either way, he wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment.

XXX

The thing about fighting, now that Ranma was undead, was that it was... all very different from how it used to be.

Oh, there were the more obvious differences in how Ranma could have his limbs chopped off and feel about as concerned as if a limb had decided to fall asleep on him – with about an equal amount of danger associated with it. But there were other things too.

Since learning the Amaguriken, punching like that had almost just become the natural way to punch. That was how deeply he'd ingrained it into his fighting-style. Unfortunately, he couldn't really perform it without chi.

Sure, there was probably some kind of magical-chi workaround, but Ranma had only just gotten a decent handle on instant movement, and the idea of trying to actually replicate a proper chi-technique using only magic felt very much like the kind of thing that would maybe be on the table a decade-or-so down the line. Sometime after he stopped instinctively trying to replicate the chi-way of doing it, at least.

Right now, if Ranma wanted to punch someone, he'd have to do it without the Amaguriken.

Unfortunately, that's what his body reached for any time he tried to throw a punch, and so he couldn't really... throw a punch, anymore.

It wasn't like he was entirely useless though. It just meant that he had to rely a bit more on things like kicks. On the plus side, he could use instant movement to kick people in the throat at supersonic speeds, and fighting that kind of handicap meant that fighting their way through a somewhat unimaginative magical cult was still a lot of fun.

A bit repetitive, sometimes, but still a good opportunity to practice.

He could do without this particular weirdo though.

Built like a brick wall or not, there was really no reason to wear clothes flimsy enough that just flexing caused them to dissolve. With weirdos like this involved, the boss-man being a Kuno of some sort was sounding ever-more plausible.

"We will prevail! Even in the face of this, we shall rise again-!" The weirdo cut off as Ranma's foot impacted his throat, instead making a funny little gurgling-noise.

Thank god. Ranma had been trying to shut him up ever since he first started ranting about some 'Ala Rubra'-people hunting them down and how much he hated them. The weirdo had sounded far too much like one of Ranma's old rivals for comfort.

And then of course, everything went to hell.

Ranma didn't really have a good view of it from where he'd suddenly found himself imbedded in a cliff-side, but from the amount of lightning-bolts and ice being thrown around, he could guess that Eva was at least having fun.

Also, he could actually hear her having fun too.

"Hahaha! I don't know why you're wearing that face, but that's great! I've been wanting to grind that fucker into the dirt for ages!" And then there was a lot more ice, and some darkness, and a very insistent feeling of immediately impending doom.

Eva always felt a bit like doom when she got serious. Ranma hadn't managed to get her to that point more than... maybe a handful of times? Not including that one time when he convinced her to turn him into a vampire, because that time had been... a lot more tangible than a mere lingering feeling of doom.

So it probably wasn't anything to be overly worried about. Instead, Ranma focused on prying himself out of the solid stone he'd been imbedded into. He was sure that it'd be a pretty amazing fight to see, so there was that, but mainly he was hurrying with it because if Eva saw him stuck there she might have Chachazero 'keep him company'.

Ranma really hated that evil little doll.

XXX

By the time Ranma managed to crawl out of the Ranma-shaped crater, they'd started to draw a crowd.

Which was a bit-... Ranma was never entirely sure if the people cheerfully deciding to watch fights were entirely right in the head. Ranma would do it, but that's because Ranma was perfectly capable of at the very least surviving should the participants throw their fireworks-or-what-not his way. Normal non-martial-artist people were a bit squishier than him, even if they never really seemed to realize that.

Then again, it was one hell of a fight, what with the massive storm-clouds raining down lightning as if it was water, and glaciers springing into existence at the flick of a wrist. The howling winds and dark shapes just made it all the more impressive, really. How the hell either of the two managed to stay flying through that kind of mess, Ranma didn't know.

He was pretty sure he could've pulled it off, if he really wanted to, but it didn't exactly look easy.

Despite all of that, Eva had not only not slowed down, her voice was still entirely audible as she cursed out whoever the apparent boss-man was. She seemed to know the guy. As in, she was certainly carrying a long-time grudge associated with him, rather than anything more recent.

It didn't really click just who it could be, until Eva started shouting about 'ten years in hell' and how he shouldn't 'fake his death like a shit-for-brains coward'.

Ranma frowned a little bit thoughtfully. He supposed the boss-man's face looked a bit on the pretty side, even if his expression was this weirdly blank thing that just made him look like he was wearing a human-face-mask.

Ranma really wished he could un-remember all of that stuff about face-stealers that Eva had lying around in her library. He'd only gone looking through her books to try and get a chi-perspective on the magic-stuff, not to be mentally scarred for life from some crazy-person deciding to actually paint what the damn thing looked like.

But yeah no, that was definitely a person. A creepy kind of person. And maybe a little bit messed up, chi-wise, from what little Ranma could sense from where he was. But definitely a person.

And from how very furious Eva was getting at the man's non-answers about leaving her to rot in a hell-hole, he was definitely the Thousand Master.

"And if you say it was for _tax-evasion_ , I will eat your goddamn heart, you son of a bitch!"

Ranma watched another glacier get split apart as it nearly landed on the Thousand Master. It would've absolutely turned everything to paste, from how quickly it'd been falling, but this wasn't the first time Eva's glaciers had been blocked by the man, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

Ranma briefly considered if he should help her out, then kind of shrugged, and settled back down to watch.

He should let Eva get it out of her system. It wasn't good to go around bottling up all that frustration. Who knew, maybe she'd channel it into creating an army of Chachazero-dolls in order to drown the world in hate and suffering.

Ranma couldn't take that risk.

XXX

It took the better part of an hour before the creepy-face-guy started actually talking, but the fight didn't really stop for that.

The basics of it seemed to be that the Thousand Master had defeated the leader of the magic-cult way back in the day, when they'd secretly been fueling both sides of a massive war. However, upon defeating them, he'd been 'infected' by a very logical-sounding voice that explained how the world was slowly draining of magic and that they needed to save the world before it died out completely.

The Thousand Master had figured that their grand war had been some kind of messed-up attempt at population-control, and had at least decided that that was taking it way too far. Instead, he'd managed to think up the idea of trapping everyone in a forever-happy magical dream, where the magic they actually used would only be a fraction of what they did currently.

Course set and personal ethics taken care of, the Thousand Master had finally been 'overtaken' by the logical-sounding voice in his head, and had become the new boss of the magic-cult.

Ranma guessed that it kind of made a bit of sense. Eva, not so much.

"You stupid bloody quack!" She threw a few more glaciers his way. "Combating the entropy of magic?! Don't make me laugh, you dumbass! Magic ain't got shit to do with physics! It's goddamn magic! If you don't want it to drain away, just make more of it!"

Ranma wasn't super well-versed in the details of how magic actually worked, what with only barely having a grasp of how to use it, but if he had to agree with anyone he'd very much rather agree with the centuries-old magical vampire than the strong mage who'd defeated her by dropping her in a pit of garlic.

He still thought that the garlic-pit was hilarious, and even if it'd never work against her again, he was still going to hold it over her head for the rest of forever. But then she was going to do much the same about him and the Nekoken, so they mostly canceled each other out.

"You 'don't think'?! Obviously not!" Eva did some weird dark-sphere thing and transformed into literal ice. She started hurling glaciers both at the Thousand Master and at herself, absorbing the ice without a glance. "I figured this out in the first century of my life! Look at it! I'm using my own magic to absorb my own magic to make more magic! Magical entropy doesn't fucking work! It's fucking magic, I ain't got to explain shit!"

Ranma briefly tried to imagine being able to absorb his own magic as he used it, and came to the conclusion that his skin was itching far too much as it was, even without adding more magic to the mix. Maybe in a century or two.

The Thousand Master definitely seemed to be losing steam, but Eva clearly wasn't. If Ranma was a betting-man he'd probably give the guy another hour, max, before he got turned into frozen paste under Eva's bare feet.

It was nice to see her so enthusiastic about stuff.

XXX

"You're a bad influence to Master's vocabulary." Chachazero commented with her usual fixed smile, tinged with something like disapproval. "When she's angry, she just swears now, instead of describing how she's going to do horrible things to people. It's very lackluster."

Ranma looked at the doll for a long moment. "You do know that she was on TV, right? They did that magical-video thing for pretty much the whole fight."

Chachazero's eyes narrowed, but her creepy smile didn't falter. "What of it?"

"For the rest of the week, every kid in the world is going to end up having their mouth washed with soap." Ranma told the doll.

Ranma wasn't the best at social stuff, but he very much remembered his pops griping on about his 'parroting phase' as a kid. Mainly because it was why he'd very quickly decided to never tell Ranma anything incriminating, ever.

This fight was clearly going to be big-time news, which meant that it'd be available to be seen by lots of people who'd want to see it. Even if they tried to limit the age-admission. In fact, _especially_ if they tried to limit the age-admission. So kids would be watching the fight, and then blurt out everything that'd come out of Eva's mouth in that fight, for _at least_ a week.

And parents were big on washing mouths with soap as punishment for swearing, right? Ranma couldn't ever recall that happening to him, but he'd certainly gotten punted into enough lakes and rivers to imply it. It wasn't like his pops remembered to stock up on soap all the time.

Chachazero stared at him for a long moment, a hint of an edge in her eyes that reminded him of Nabiki staring at a pile of money. "Daddy?"

"Gah!" Ranma flinched away from the doll, and he could hear his cry echoed a bit away at a slightly higher pitch. Apparently Eva had caught at least that much of the conversation.

"Quit calling me that!"

XXX

It was kind of hilarious, watching people bend over backwards to do stupid shit like giving Eva a parade she didn't want, all because apparently she was the first one to ever completely violate the laws of entropy with magic. Or something.

Ranma had admittedly been struck by the slowly dawning realization that all of the fancy food that was being served in celebration actually tasted about as exciting as plain rice. It was edible, but it wasn't filling either.

At the beginning he'd wondered if perhaps there were just a lot of really crappy chefs, but then there was the fact that he kept getting peckishly thirsty. As if he was using the fancy food to work up an appetite.

It wasn't the first time he'd been faced with things that he'd given up in order to escape all of the complicated stuff with the Amazons, and it really couldn't compare to his chi being replaced with magic. But he'd been _expecting_ his chi to get messed up, he hadn't really considered that his taste-buds would also change around.

It was a... mostly sad, realization.

On the plus side, he'd have an excuse to avoid eating anything that Akane ever cooked, but then he didn't really plan on spending the rest of his life with Akane. That'd been why he'd gone through with it, after all.

Chachazero was thankfully distracted elsewhere, standing next to Eva and making gleeful threats at the well-wishers that her irritable master wasn't quite drunk enough to make herself.

On the slightly more interesting side of the spectrum, with his appetite growing in the middle of a crowded ballroom, Ranma was starting to notice that certain people just looked... 'tastier' than others.

He wasn't going to do anything about it – he was peckish, not starving – but it was a weird kind of thing to notice. He'd have expected to need to actually drink their blood to be able to determine that sort of stuff, not just pass them by in a crowded room.

Anyway, with the extremely public fight with the Thousand Master, and the facts revealed in that fight, a lot of the governments' apparent attempts at keeping the 'magical crisis' secret had instead been blown wide open.

Which meant that lots of people were now working to replicate Eva's entropy-defying feat all across Magicus Mundus, in order to give them better insight into how to make a planet-sized anti-entropy magic-catcher. Or something. Ranma hadn't been paying too much attention.

He'd honestly mostly been paying attention to Eva dressing up in weird clothing and then discarding it, and then dressing up in other weird clothing before discarding that. It was kind of fun to see her try out different 'looks', even if half the time she always seemed to default back to wandering around barefoot in her underwear.

Ranma was pretty sure that she'd considered attending the party in only her underwear, and he was a little bit curious about why she'd decided not to. It clearly wouldn't have been for the sake of anyone else's prudishness, so it was either because she wanted to make a particular impression, or she wanted to avoid making a different kind of impression.

Ranma didn't have the faintest clue what any of those impressions might be, but clearly this was the kind of stuff that Eva thought about when considering her wardrobe.

Ranma mostly just defaulted back to something that was easy to move around in, but considering how Eva tended to have her clothes exploded whenever she didn't bother to dodge attacks that wouldn't actually hurt her, she clearly didn't put a lot of thought into the practicality of an outfit for fighting in.

No, Eva was all about making an impression on people. Hell if Ranma had the faintest clue what kind of impression she was planning to make with whatever outfit she decided on, but that was clearly what she was aiming for.

Chachazero was a bit more sensible, what with literally having only the single outfit to choose from. Or variants of the single outfit. Ranma was sure that he'd seen that dress splattered with enough blood to be impossible to laundry out, and yet it was as pristine as ever. Creepy little doll.

XXX

"Right. Let's go." Ranma promptly grabbed Eva around the waist like a sack of potatoes, and took off, ignoring any protest either she or the stuffy man she'd been talking to made.

It'd been nearly a full month of Eva beating the theory of her 'grand miracle' into the heads of every academic who wanted to know, and by now it was clear that anybody who still wanted to know about it could just pick it up from someone else.

So they were leaving, before Eva could decide to go ballistic on someone for their inane questions, or Ranma started to climb the walls and punch politicians in the face out of boredom.

Chachazero was technically also a factor, but she'd been threatening homicide within the first five minutes, so she didn't really count.

They'd barely managed to explore anything at all of Magicus Mundus before the magical cultists had made a nuisance of themselves, and when tracking down those guys for fights a lot of the good 'wandering aimlessly across the wilderness' had fallen completely by the wayside.

Ranma had been stuck in Nerima for nearly three years, Eva had been stuck in Mahora for eight, and they really needed a better vacation than barely a month spent hunting down a bunch of cultists.

Eva stopped struggling about halfway out of the city, which was great because it meant that Ranma could reapply the gag he'd given Chachazero to keep her from squealing cheerfully in his ear as they flew through the air.

And by the time they hit the road on the outskirts, Eva twisted out of his grip and started to walk on her own.

"Idiot dumbass." Was her full comment on it, but she didn't actually argue.

Ranma smiled at her back, before falling into step with her.

It was good to be back on the road.

XXX

Epilogue

Several years later

XXX

Takamichi wasn't the best teacher.

Ignoring the fact that he still struggled with keeping students from acting out without planting their faces into the dirt, he'd spent a lot of time and energy on his work outside of Mahora's walls.

He didn't regret it, by any means, but it meant that he found himself slightly humbled at times by how very dedicated the more regular members of the Mahora staff was.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to remember a certain day of chaos and mayhem whenever a certain math-teacher decided to drone on, or find himself appreciating the full extent of this particular math-teacher's situation in the aftermath of aforementioned day. But it did mean that he wouldn't try to replicate it, even if he was sometimes tempted.

Still, today was the first day of the first Mahora Festival since Negi Springfield joined the faculty. Needless to say, the boy-teacher was clearly both very nervous and very excited.

It was kind of adorable.

And then of course things started to go a bit weird.

"Put some clothes on!" A very nostalgic female voice hissed angrily.

"I don't want to hear that from _you_." A male voice responded, sounding like they were just doing it to pick a fight.

"Daddy has become an exhibitionist too!" A brightly echoey voice that could only belong to a certain doll piped up.

There was a very audible sound of a full-body shiver. "Don't call me that, you creep!"

Rounding the corner, Takamichi was treated to the sight of a young man without a shirt on, a blonde girl who was making a very non-girlish face of annoyance, and a doll that could walk on its own.

"But isn't mommy and daddy going to make lots and lots of babies?" The doll continued with cheerful abandon. "Isn't that why you're always shouting in the bedroom?"

Evangeline grabbed the doll by the head, lifting it into the air, her face red to the very tip of her ears. "You know, now that you mention it, I've been thinking about making a new doll. A _better_ doll." She growled at it, fangs flashing.

"Heh." The young man tried to stifle a snicker.

Evangeline's head snapped over towards him, murder in her eyes. "Did you hear something _funny_ , Ranma?"

"Is someone embarrassed that she couldn't keep her voice down?" Ranma grinned at her, sounding positively gleeful about it.

And that was the story of how the first day of the Mahora Festival included a very extensive display of 'technology', where ice was scattered all across the campus as if it was a gigantic fireworks-display.

And at least one particular math-teacher locked themselves in their apartment for a week and refused to leave, classes or no.

XXX

 **A/n: The Thousand Master here was... kind of a hostage, kind of not. Basically, it's a halfway cross between magical possession and Stockholm-syndrome, where Nagi was the one who came up with the idea of dumping everyone in a "happy dream", whereas Cosmo Entelecheia were still voting for the "drown the world in a ceaseless population-limiting war"-option.**

 **Also, I don't... really dislike Nagi. I think he's a bit of an idiot. A charming kind of guy who doesn't think things through, and kind of just wings it basically all the time. And, with that description, I perfectly understand why he gets along so well with Rakan. But yeah, he definitely deserves getting punched in the face, at least.**

 **But yeah, this was a lot of fun to write, and I hope that it was fun to read too.**


End file.
